Helped by a chance meeting during my 2006 Nuffield Scholarship, I served 2011 to 2015 as head of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) experiment station. These are some highlights during those years.
Tending the long-term continuous cropping experiment (LTCCE): Three rice crops per year, every year for more than 50 years. Verging on gardening rather than farming, VIPs view it, scientists make reference to it and many a photo has been taken in it.
The verdict so far? The soil is fine, but yields do seem to be drifting down a bit. They suspect hotter nights may not be helping, as the theoretical yield it is referenced to, is also declining.
Tending the Genebank’s seed regeneration plots: Rices of every shape, size, form and colour. Often, these rices don’t exist in the outside world anymore; victims of farm modernisation. Harvesting them was a headache at times. I particularly liked the coloured-pericarp rices; black, purple, red.
Often, these rices don’t exist in the outside world anymore; victims of farm modernisation
Helping the push for C4 rice: The next big lift in rice yield may come from C4 rice, so it photosynthesizes like corn or sorghum. Bill and Melinda Gates are funding a multi-stage push to get that. I missed out on meeting Bill by a couple of months.
A lot of their practical work is in a low-CO2 environment, as that shows up the C4 photosynthetic habit; they grow better in low-CO2.
Working with very flash precision gear: Our breeders insisted seed was planted very precisely, as they have been working with transplanted rice for many moons, so we used flash Austrian gear to do it. You could dial-up the exact intra-row spacing and the depth placement was crazy accurate.
Seeing our best breeders in action: From Dr Fangming Xie, IRRI’s hybrid breeder to Dr Arvind Kumar, who has bred tough-as-nails drought-tolerant varieties for the subcontinent. The scale, intensity and persistence of what they do humbled me. The epitomy was Dr KK Jena, who crossed wild rice with domesticated rice tens of thousands of times, just to get one cross to take. That got us a new salt tolerance gene.
The privilege of a leveraged position: IRRI helps millions.That is a motivation that has driven me for many moons, so I was grateful for the chance.
- The Land will be running columns from Nuffield Scholars every fortnight.
